/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10764885]

>I only read the classics
What is up with people on here only reading classics? That's like being alive when those authors were still writing books and missing their masterpieces because you were too busy reading the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.10764930]

I read mostly classics. I try newer stuff too, but prefer to stay in the 19th and 20th century.

[Anonymous No.10764940]

>>10764885
but the classics are better

[Anonymous No.10764953]

>>10764885
The thing is that hindsight is 20/20. People tend to look back with rose-colored glasses but there were just as many shit books written back then as there are now. So yeah you might pick up Crime and Punishment in a bookstore in Petersburg in 1886 or you might pick up one of the thousands of shit books that were published that year. However now the books that have survived from 1886 are guaranteed to at least have some value so if I read classics I don't really have to worry about whether or not reading them will be a valuable use of my time and if I was just buying whatever was on the NYT bestsellers list, I would.

[Anonymous No.10764954]

>>10764885
Because people have less time, and because there's less of a filter of active intellectual circles to know what is really ground-breaking in new literature and what is just circulated for publisher profit and pseud credentialism.

If you want to justify reading something as truly essential nowadays you have to justify it as either classic or fun.

[Anonymous No.10764959]

>>10764885
Pretty much everyone on this board got crappy modern educations so we're all catching up and trying to become familiar with works that literary people of the past would already have read by this age.

[Anonymous No.10764973]

>>10764885
>reading anything but the greeks

[Anonymous No.10765167]

>>10764885
If these authors were alive today we would have no way distinguishing between them and the other 200 megatons of pages published every year . time is the most ruthless critic. More has already been written than you could read if you lived 100 times your natural life span, and we produce more and more and more at an ever growing rate. 90% of everything is shit and you do not have time for the new

[Anonymous No.10765185]

>>10764885
People here have no critical reading or thinking ability so they need academic and historical consensus to tell them what is worth consuming.

[Anonymous No.10765189]

>he doens't exclusively watch OOP VHS from garage sales and head shop back rooms featuring big actors first days

[Anonymous No.10765196]

>>10765167
Very true. BTW can anyone tell me what order I should read Nietzchie's works in? Dont know if this gets asked a lot. Thinking about jumping into his stuff.

[Anonymous No.10765205]

>>10765196
please don’t ever again do subthreads on 4chan or else

The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, BGE, Genealogy of Morals, The Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols, The Will to Power faggot

[Anonymous No.10765209]

I don't have a long time on this mortal coil. I'm not going to waste it thumbing through dross in the hope of "discovering" some great new work.

[Anonymous No.10765223]

>>10765205
Sorry yo, but I just had to know. Thnx anyways, much appreciated.

[Anonymous No.10765940]

>>10764885
>that's like being alive when those authors were still writing books and missing their masterpieces because you were too busy reading the Greeks
Is that a bad thing?
Plus Infinite Jest, GR, Blood Meridian etc. are not yet classics but people here read them.
It's just easier to pick up a classic instead of making a wong choice which results with waste of money or bizzare book dropping.

Reading classics only is better than reading non-classics only either way.

[Anonymous No.10765991]

>>10764885
Many people disagree, but the real classics (Plato, proclus, Philo, Plotinus, damascius, Olympiodorus, Iamblichus etc.) were describing a philosophy that was erased from the face of the earth by the church and the western world has had access to it for half the amount of time that it has had access to Shakespeare. The information provided by these sources existed long before these writers put pen to paper. This information offers a solution and I’d suggest you fucking find it quickly. Fucking read it. Quit your day job tomorrow. Get a job as a night-time security guard and study this shit every day for at least 5 hours. It’s the only non-goddamned way.

[Anonymous No.10766000]

>>10764885
>doesn't know what the classics are
the Greeks are the classics retard

[Anonymous No.10766006]

>>10765940
those books are decades old now though

id consider them classics, at least neo classics

[Anonymous No.10766007]

>>10764973
Bro, that pic is fucking perfect paired with that comment. Nicee

[Anonymous No.10766010]

>>10765991
>platonism is a coherent and complete system of philosophy

[Anonymous No.10766012]

>>10764959
I feel the same way

[Anonymous No.10766017]

>>10765991
Sure thing. I'll just drop everything and devote myself to some dead mediterranean guys because someone on a message board said so.

[Anonymous No.10766024]

>>10766010
What is incoherent? What is incomplete? You fuck.

[Anonymous No.10766027]

>>10764885
I like the way they were written. Modern writers are peurile. Link me to the modern Cervantes/Mottieux tr. and I'll give it a whirl.

[Anonymous No.10766165]

>>10766000
They aren't the ONLY classics pleblet.

[Anonymous No.10766169]

>tfw one of my favorite authors won a Pulitzer Prize
>tfw love her short stories
>tfw novels aren't quite as good but still much better than the brunt of modern fiction

>tfw afraid to shill on /lit/ because I'll get called a brainlet for enjoying a writer who didn't die at least a half-century ago

[Anonymous No.10766199]

>>10766027
pleb as fuck. An unwillingness to keep abreast with the contemporary is an unwillingness to face reality.

[Anonymous No.10766271]

>>10766169
who is it?

[Anonymous No.10766342]

>>10764885
I only read classics and Murakami

[Anonymous No.10766459]

Because after the great vat of gravy has cooled for a couple hundred years one can scrape off the delicious wrinkly skin on the surface without getting any chunks off the bottom

[Anonymous No.10766474]

>>10766342
Are you me?

[Anonymous No.10766483]

>>10766017
He is right you know

[Anonymous No.10766488]

>>10766169
>being afraid to voice your opinion on /lit/ for fear of ridicule

This is more brainlet than enjoying modern writers.

[Anonymous No.10766489]

Like it or not, most people can only read so much and I certainly don't want to begrudge people any unwillingness on their part to spend hours forcing themselves into reading things they don't like. You shouldn't force yourself to read things you're not interested in, of course, something everybody's all to quick to agree with when it's classics we're talking about (lol it's a bunch of dead guys anyway!) but when it's new stuff it's more like "why don't you face reality and get with the times gramps?" When really you should just dive into what interests you (and that means going past the "entry level" at some point for sure), there's plenty out there (way more than enough for most people) to enjoy either way, no need to turn it into some sort of virtue signaling about "the classics" or "timeliness and relevance"

[Anonymous No.10766494]

>>10766169
>He's scared of being made fun of on an anonymous image board
Pathetic

[Anonymous No.10766500]

>>10764953
>There were just as many shit books written back then as there are now.
Why do post-fedoras always have to repeat this idiotic point?
It simply is not true and does not further your argument. It is plainly not true. Take good or bad out if it, there wer FAR less books being written at any point in time ("back then") just in general. Either the increase in books being written has come entirely from 'good books' or is simply mathematically impossible that your statement should be true.
Am I nitpicking? No, because there's more to it: The barriers for entry used to be much, much higher (and, roughly speaking, the further you go back, the higher). That meant a lot of dogshit never got put to paper, because it's potential authors neither could read or write nor had access to a writing medium, to copywriters, printers/publishers etc.
There were no doubt things written in the past that we would consider 'bad' or not worth writing, and plenty of them have been forgotten/lost. But that doesn't prove your point.

[Anonymous No.10766503]

>>10765991
>Plato, proclus, Philo, Plotinus, damascius, Olympiodorus, Iamblichus etc

Proclus were deserved to be written from BIG fucking P you moron, Damascius too. And i absolutely agree with your post then

[Anonymous No.10766519]

>>10764953
>>10766500
I hadn't even read your full post, turns out you ended up making the point I would have made. I still hate that argument, which is so often used to make the point that today's literary world is supposedly just as high-quality if not more so than at any point in the past.

[Anonymous No.10766524]

>>10764885
>That's like being alive when those authors were still writing books and missing their masterpieces because you were too busy reading the Greeks.
>implying

[Anonymous No.10766528]

>>10764885
>broadly calling every work that isn't contemporary a "classic"
That's just called literature

[Anonymous No.10766549]

>>10765991
good post. the majority of church 'theology' is one long chain of bad thinking, founded on a bad interpretation.

[Anonymous No.10766552]

>>10764885
>thousands upon thousands of books written by humankind through all of history
>over the years many have persisted in cultural consciousness
>there's still hundreds of them
Because, lad, there is only so much time and we often choose to start at the beginning.

[Anonymous No.10766553]

the best parts of the first world in our time are rooted in platonic thought, and religious opinion has for millennia been the source of oppression and stagnation

[Anonymous No.10766557]

>>10766549
> the majority of church 'theology' is one long chain of bad thinking
There were good thinkers in that tradition. But mostly blockheads, sure. But can't you say that about any other tradition?

[Anonymous No.10766560]

>>10764885
>That's like being alive when those authors were still writing books and missing their masterpieces because you were too busy reading the Greeks.
Which would've been fine because the Greeks rule.

[Anonymous No.10766576]

>>10766553
keep fighting the good fight against the spiritual materialists platonist anon, I believe you'll have a good afterlife

[Anonymous No.10766588]

The only contemporary writing worth reading are comics, like Batman.

[Anonymous No.10766589]

>>10766576
Which is embodied and perfected in the Abrahamic faith so.. there goes that theory.

The best faith is something Neoplatonic, like Neoplatonic Islam.

[Anonymous No.10766603]

>>10766576
thanks for the kind word anon

>>10766589
go away reactionary atheist buttmunch, go be a wormfood nothing with CHRISTopher hitchens. you big dummy, islam is an abrahamic faith. cant we just be happy to put down our mortal burden and return to the one.

[Anonymous No.10766608]

there goes that theory looooooooool

[Anonymous No.10766614]

>>10766603
>>10766608
:/

I'm sure /lit/ must be dead, for I am clearly not an atheist, but a Muslim.

[Anonymous No.10766625]

>>10766614
>I am clearly ... a Muslim
>the best faith is

you're a brainlet. faith in god is a philosophical position, not an ice cream flavor. you would know this if you were not a brainlet. stop soiling platonism with your bearded ways.

[Anonymous No.10766626]

>>10766589
>the beauty of Platonic Idealism which is analogous to Hindu Idealism which are the most noble of all the faiths any human has ever aspired to hold is perfected in the disgusting ressentiment filled scheming cave mutterer screeds of the desert people and their domesticated European adherents
no

[Anonymous No.10766629]

>best way to believe in god is neoplatonism
okay so deism
>yea but it also has to be Islam
pic related, it's me

[Anonymous No.10766641]

>>10766024
Why does Plato need to appeal to transcendentalism to justify living virtuously in Gorgias? If instead of all the arguing he would have just said "live according to virtue so you get rewarded in heaven" I wouldnt have to waste so much time on this shit.

[Anonymous No.10766652]

>>10766641
because an afterlife nevermind a specific heaven is not knowable, and it is taken on faith that the gods find merit in mortals who emulate them
>inb4 what is faith

[Anonymous No.10766677]

>>10766652
>taken on faith
I'm not going to fedora you by saying a defense of virtues shouldnt come down to "to what god wants"; Instead, I want to find a more amiable reading of his afterlife. I just cant see an intuitive way of reframing "take on faith that the gods reward you for emulating them" without it sounding like mental gymnastics.

[Anonymous No.10767224]

>>10766641
‘Live according to virtue so you get rewarded in heaven’ is more like the Christian perspective imo. Plato was more like ‘learn philosophy, meditate, contemplate the forms, practice dialectic and enter heaven before your body dies, oh yeah, also, of course you need to do good things and avoid bad things in this process’

[Anonymous No.10767247]

>>10766007

[Anonymous No.10767276]

>>10764959
Except you're reading garbage. Literally everything posted here is garbage.
>>10765991
Platonism isn't erased. It should be.

[Anonymous No.10767279]

>>10766589
Neoplatonism is only the best bonfire fuel.

[Anonymous No.10767299]

>>10767276
>Except you're reading garbage
Then those are the people that aren't reading the classics, bud. Pay attention.

[Anonymous No.10767837]

>>10767299
The people reading 'classics' are reading garbage. In fact, they are reading garbage superficially.

[Anonymous No.10767860]

Where the fuck do i even start with contemporary literature though? There is just so much shit published and i don't have the time to read everything, and anything contemporary that comes to attention just mostly seems like it's been built up by marketing.

I don't refuse to read contemporary works, it's just too hard sorting through the chaff.

[Anonymous No.10768143]

>>10767860
Start with the memes.

[Anonymous No.10768186]

>>10766169
>enjoying female writters
The absolute state of /lit/

[Anonymous No.10768198]

>>10767860
Magris

[Anonymous No.10768220]

>>10764885
>>10764953
Pretty much this. Yes, there's an absolute shit-ton of books being written in the past few years, but there's no real way of telling whether or not you'd be wasting your time with them, and the only way to do so would be to peruse through anything that remotely interested you.

I started reading exclusively the classics because after trying to read a few books from new authors that were written in the past few years or decade, where people waxed on about how they were "insant classics", ground-breaking and revolutionary, I found them personally to be mediocre and shitty. This, of course, isn't counting modern studies or science, purely fiction and philosophy.

When it comes to literature, the only true critic is time. Let the mediocre novels crumble away into nothingness, let time do the work for you. Besides, there's still more classical literature out there in the world than you can read in your lifetime. It's not like you're going to run out anytime soon.

[Anonymous No.10768228]

>>10767276
>Except you're reading garbage.
Subjective, kys

[Anonymous No.10768234]

>>10765991
>Quit your day job tomorrow. Get a job as a night-time security guard and study this shit every day for at least 5 hours. It’s the only non-goddamned way.

I'm unemployed atm and am seriously considering this.

[Anonymous No.10768348]

>>10766169
>her

[Anonymous No.10768462]

>>10765991
Are There any physical requirements for being a night time security guy?

[Anonymous No.10769087]

>>10767837
What is your argument as to why every book labeled a classic on this board is garbage?

[Anonymous No.10769108]

>>10767276
What do you like to read?

[Anonymous No.10769114]

>>10767860
Tao Lin

[Anonymous No.10769391]

>>10766488
This guy gets it.

[Anonymous No.10769418]

>>10764885
Because the only reason I read is to appear intellectual in social situations and classic books are filled with multifarious confabulation which helps cultivate my marvelous phraseology.

[Anonymous No.10769442]

>>10767837

No - in fact - you. You are the garbage. Superficial garbage.

Check and mate, faggotron.

[Anonymous No.10769520]

>>10767276
Talk shit, post lit

[Anonymous No.10770036]

Ideally, I want to read modern writing but what I do know is that your average basic fiction that's interested in telling a mass-marketed story is a plodding read. I find reading classics right now will give me a formative lens to judge other books. But really what do I know, I find I've been too pretentious in reading for prose when really at the end of the day, the (classical) author simply feels that he has something worth sharing. The idea and plot is much more important than the writing and I'm reading most of the classics in translation which is essentially a work in itself and defeats the purpose of reading for prose.

What I will say is ideas presented in canonical works are much richer than what you would find in Harry Potter or what have you and there is satisfaction in participating with the dialogue by attempting to understand what it is the author wishes to partake, rather than having it all spelled out for you, letter by letter.

[Anonymous No.10770062]

>>10770036
You can't compare a classic work of literature to YA fiction like Harry Potter as an attempt for posterity. That is being intellectually dishonest and willfully ignorant.

[Anonymous No.10770119]

I've always been more interested in writing than reading, and classics are more valuable for absorbing into one's authorial mind. I don't need to read the latest up and coming book to write one.

[Anonymous No.10770138]

>>10770062
>>you can't compare a classic work to YA fiction
>what is aesop's fables
>what is the jungle book
>what are the just-so stories
>who are bros grimm
>what are the childhood adventures of Hermes
>who is world-renowned boy wizard harry potter

just stop trying to defend a position you haven't actually considered and don't really hold

[Anonymous No.10770149]

>>10770062
Well, yeah, I agree with you and I apologize. My point came across poorly and I don't mean to judge YA fiction with whatever lens or erudition I'm hoping to gain from studying classics, but I would like to read modern authors who wish to write for a serious, or intelligent(?), audience and compare them, because I definitely do not doubt that there is talent worth reading today. Gaetan Soucy is one such author that I personally adore myself who lived through the second half of the last century. I wish he were still alive

[Anonymous No.10770340]

>>10768462
I think it depends on the place. I’m wiry white boy, so I don’t really fit the mold, but I have two degrees so I’m hoping that makes me a shoe-in in spite of my race/weight

[Anonymous No.10770430]

>>10770340
you do a disservice to your race with your weakling attitude and lanky physique

[Anonymous No.10770518]

>>10764885
Personally I only read big brain books, not my fault it is mostly classics that achieve big brain

[Anonymous No.10770524]

>>10770518
T.

[Anonymous No.10770540]

>>10770518
>me b-big brain boy

[Anonymous No.10770558]

>mfw one day people are going to call "The Fault In Our Stars" a classic

[Anonymous No.10770569]

>>10764885
I've been here forever. I just read. I think that we could use more of that in general.

[Anonymous No.10770626]

Zadie Smith
Helen Oyeyeme
Colson Whitehead
ZZ Packer
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Roxane Gay
Natalie Baszile
James Hannaham
Dinaw Mengestu
Jesmyn Ward
Teju Cole
Marlon James
Tayari Jones
Jeffery Renard Allen
Taiye Selasi
Ayana Mathis

You don't know these, /lit/? That's because you don't actually bother to read contemporary literature,

[Anonymous No.10770639]

>not exclusively reading fun YA fiction
I’m just here to laugh at all the plebs dedicating all their free time to pretending they like stuffy outdated literature. All the strangers on the internet all real impressed, bros

[Anonymous No.10770795]

>>10770626
I count one (1) potentially white man

[Anonymous No.10770851]

>>10770639
why read YA when you could play video games or watch anime, at least these media aren't garbage by default

[Anonymous No.10770853]

>>10770851
Because Snake Pass was the last good video game and anime is shit

[Anonymous No.10770855]

>>10764885
>I know what /lit/ reads

[Anonymous No.10770898]

>>10766500
You are wrong. Read enough classics to see people have been writing shit-to-be-forgotten for millennia. Read Schopenhauer’s On History or any of Tolstoy’s tomes to see this being talked about.

[Anonymous No.10770913]

>>10766500
It is true, you're simply not well read enough to know this (and probably have a very superficial view of literature as well).

[Anonymous No.10770924]

>>10770913
did you even read his post?

[Anonymous No.10770929]

>>10770626
4/10 bait, too obvious. classics are written by dead white (and Mediterranean) men, your post has no power here.

[mr no1 No.10770967]

GRL FORCE is a new fav book of mine, was given it as a B day gift by a friend, love it, think taylor squad with guns and attitude with a twist of mission impossible and charlies angels, https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Force-Jonathan-J-West/dp/1483478017/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1514399100&sr=1-2 - concept add on YT i found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PP0TyOC-8E&t=14s

[Anonymous No.10771210]

>>10764885
Those authors had all read the Greeks. If you had read your classics you would have known.

Tsk, tsk, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.10771374]

>>10771210
If the authors of all the classics read the Greeks, what did the Greeks read? Their diaries?

[Anonymous No.10771385]

>>10771374

The Orientals.

[Anonymous No.10771395]

>>10771374
Africans

[Anonymous No.10772700]

>>10771374
>>10771385
>>10771395
Greeks couldn't read all the "classics" come from later transcriptions of oral tales and roman embellishment i.e. all the classics have been so diluted that by the time you read a translation it doesn't even resemble the original so you will never understand what the greeks were about, their true philosophy is lost

[Anonymous No.10772712]

>>10771374
The Greeks

[Anonymous No.10773147]

A classic is a book that people have decided is worthy of cross generational reading. This means only the best books survive. If you don't read classics then by definition you are not reading the best books. Why would anyone want that?

[Anonymous No.10773178]

>>10765991
How would quitting a job to get a different job give you more time, dumbass?

[Anonymous No.10773231]

>>10773178
There's usually a lot of downtime in those types of jobs which would allow for reading.

[Anonymous No.10774266]

>>10770639
>it's impossible to enjoy the classics
Jeez have they got you cucked.

[Anonymous No.10774289]

>tfw I just read whatever I want including classics,philosophical texts, contemporary lit, shitty pulp & YA trash

[Anonymous No.10774297]

>tfw I just read whatever I want including classics,philosophical texts, contemporary lit, shitty pulp & YA trash

[Anonymous No.10774311]

>>10774297
My brother from another mother

[Anonymous No.10774955]

>>10766006
But the authors are still alive, with the exception of DFW killing himself. That was the discussion topic.

[Anonymous No.10775232]

>>10774297
This. I can't believe that it took this many posts just to say it.

[Anonymous No.10775241]

>>10764885
In all seriousness, reading the postmoderns and post-'classical' literature without reading the classics could be very deleterious to your psyche and incapacitate you into an existential death drive.

The worse thing modern education does is push a syllabi entirely comprised of deconstruction with students who barely understand what it is they're deconstructing.

[Anonymous No.10775306]

>he reads books instead of scrolls

[Anonymous No.10775318]

>>10774266
I didn't say it's impossible to enjoy the classics. Most of them, not all of them, are objectively shit by today's standards and should be regarded as such. We've learned and improved over time, that's simply the way of things

[Anonymous No.10775343]

>>10775318
>Most of them, not all of them, are objectively shit by today's standards and should be regarded as such.
Why?

[Anonymous No.10775353]

The entire "classic" genre needs to just be renamed "depressed white males with first world problems" already. Because that's literally all this genre has to offer. Like Stoner whining about his cushy tenured position during a period where black unemployment was over 20%. Get over your selfs

[Anonymous No.10775356]

>>10775353
Agreed. From the Greeks to modern classics, there has been absolutely no change whatsoever. Over 2000 years of time and zero improvement.

[Anonymous No.10775361]

>>10775356
And that changes are the backgrounds and you know that. Same mopey white dude in the spotlight

[Anonymous No.10775375]

>>10771374
Inspired by the oral tradition of Egyptians and Pheonicians. Basically they didn't read.

[Anonymous No.10775487]

>>10775361
I know. I mean, it's 2018. We've had dead old white guys as the heroes of our stories ever since the Epic of Gilgamesh. Where are the strong trans women in Homer?

[Anonymous No.10775493]

>>10775487
Homer was a blind autistic retard, don't be ablest.

[Anonymous No.10775529]

>>10773178
As a nighttime security guard you have 7 hours to read per shift, and you get paid for it, dumbass.

[Anonymous No.10776166]

>>10775493
>Homer
>a retard

delete thyself